$300 billion this week. $700 billion last month. It sounds unfair – piles of money flying out the door of our nation’s taxes to fix a mess we hardly understand, let alone took part in.

But it’s that very point of view that’s part of the problem. Looking back upon the decade-long run-up in home prices and easy (dare I say, careless) credit, it’s hard to find a soul who didn’t contribute in some way. There were rogues and instigators – for sure. Predatory lenders deliberately targeted unsavvy borrowers who they knew could easily be wooed by the promise of a new home: the realization of the American Dream. Wall Street investors continuously pushed lenders to just keep writing loans, whatever the terms. It didn’t matter. But get real: what the hell were these borrowers thinking? Many were just as much a part of this as everyone else. Imagine actually believing that you could afford a $700,000 home on a $30,000 annual salary with no proof of income and no money down. That’s just as irresponsible as the lender who passed it through.

Now the ugly clean-up is in full swing. It’s sad, but we have to grit our teeth and continue to write these multi-bilion-dollar checks to the major institutions that screwed up – Citibank being the latest. Otherwise, our jobless numbers would be much much worse. Our economy may continue its freefall to much deeper depths for much longer than now anticipated.

There will be more. We haven’t seen the bottom yet. Taxpayers will continue to foot the bill, and we might as well just get over the bitterness and blame game now so we can focus on what each of us CAN do to not repeat this incredible period of financial irresponsibility that brought us here.

For some, it may be a matter of saving more, paying down credit cards and (gasp!) living within our means! For others, it may be losing a job, a house, and starting over. For them, I feel truly sorry.

Walking around a Target store today, I found myself amazed at all the crap we buy – myself included. Why do we need a $20 rolling pin made of silicone? Would a plain jane recycled wooden one at $7 not suffice? I understand that the buying and selling of consumer goods stands at the heart of the modern economy, but it feels like a House of Cards right now, like we bet all this money on a structure that could collapse at any moment.

If the administration starts telling me I need to shop in order to help the economy, I’ll throw a brick through my television and refuse to replace it.

This year, my resolution is to become more fiscally conservative, cut down on the amount of waste I contribute to the earth, and invest in my experiences and my future over my possessions. Great change comes from dire crises. I believe this one will be a change not only at the policy level, but at the personal level. Or at least, it will be a forced change for many.

Fiscally conservative or broke – whichever camp you happen to be in, may the times not be as bad as they could be and may we make it out having learned the valuable skill of living frugally.

But please stop speaking to reporters now. Please go and do something useful with your time. Maybe you could spend some time with your family, or governing your own state. But myself and a whole slew of others are just tired of hearing you spew hot air and make an ass of yourself on national news. You can run in 2012, but you cannot win. We are tired of right-wing conservative nuts running things. We are tired of divisive politics. We need solutions. We need positive leadership.

The people have spoken. They want REAL CHANGE. At the moment, you are not it.

However, if you really want to make a serious bid for the White House in 2012 — go do something about it that really matters. Go help with the laundry list of real problems we face as a nation now. Create real change and maybe we will listen. But as it is, people are watching but not listening.

We want real change. And you haven’t proven capacity to facilitate nor lead that charge.

I can’t remember the last time a politician made me feel this positive about the potential for change. I felt a switch turn on when Obama said, “This was never about me. This is about you.” Well thank you sir, I’ll have another.

I voted for Obama because I saw this vote as one for our children, not for ourselves. I’ve heard him say quite a few times that if we don’t change course on the way things are going in this country we will actually end up leaving the next generation in a situation that is worse than our own. Yeah yeah, that’s coated in political rhetoric. But we are amidst global warming, a recession, a big fat gigantic banking crisis, and pervasive cynicism about any of our government leaders. Leaving things in this condition would count as worse in my book and that would be a first in our history.

As Obama said at the Democratic National Convention, “We are better than that.”

We are better than the greedy, you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us world bullies we’ve come to be seen as these last 8 years. We are better than the divided nation we’ve become. We are better than those who turn their backs on people who have nothing only to serve those who have everything. It’s not socialism. It’s being a responsible nation, unifying for the common good in order to progress.

It is not acceptable to allow a president to lead the way Bush did. While Obama respected him as a president and politician, he gets it. He gets why special interests get in the way. He gets why it’s wrong to lead by fear-mongering. He gets why so many nations have a low opinion of us right now.

I voted for Obama because he embodies the United States that I know. He is someone I would hold as a role model for my children. He is diverse, like the people I know. He works hard, like people I know. Oh and he owns a house — just one — like most of the people I know.

I voted for Obama because he’s shown me that he sees the big picture in addition to the thousands of individual problems that make up that big picture. He looks me in the eye and tells me he gives a shit. He owes no corporation anything. And so far, I believe him.

Hope. Unity. Change.

This I read and laugh as I envision the pile of credit card offers waiting for me in my mailbox when I get home. You know the routine: pull out piles of junk mail, all of it labeled “Urgent!” or “Important Offer Inside!”; carry junk mail up to my apartment; fumble with keys as junk mail takes up one arm; enter apartment and toss junk mail on the “designated junk mail” table, otherwise known as the dining room table I once knew and loved; sigh heavily at the mess sitting before me; later shout expletives as I shred these offers and try to bring order to the chaos that is my life.

I mean really: credit card companies pulling back on offers? This only a few days after the same NYT ran a story about a woman in bankruptcy who said it’s disgusting how she still gets sleezy offers in the mail for plastic – even while she is obviously going through a major financial disaster.

Really? If they stop sending me offers I will bow down and kiss the ground whose future otherwise would’ve been the junk mail landfill. These companies owe me hundreds of hours of time I’ve wasted cleaning up this crap over the years. I’ll be happy to hear some paper might be spared now that the credit markets are nearly paralyzed. But some part of me doesn’t believe this is really the case.

What do you think? Did we really let people who didn’t know what was going on head up two of the largest mortgage financiers in the world? Or did they know and play along in the name of greed?

Check it out over at Inman News.

photo by drowning.amanda

My head is in personal finance right now so I’ve been doing a lot of reading, thinking, meeting with folks in the space. It’s made me think about my own situation and whether I feel I’ve done OK or a horrible job. The fact that I’m 31 and not in debt (other than my school loans, which are manageable by common standards) signals to me that I’ve done OK.

Am I a millionaire? No. In fact, I don’t even own a home… which leads me to the point of this post:

What is the biggest money mistake you’ve made in your life? Or another way to phrase this is, What is the biggest money mistake you averted in your life?

I had lunch with a financial advisor in San Francisco last week, who told me that almost across the board a huge differentiator between those who are doing OK with money midlife and those who are staring at some major problems is the car. Did you buy a new BMW as a reward for graduating college? Chances are, that was your first mistake which led you down a path of financial problems into your 30s. Compare these folks to those who skipped the new car and you see an entirely different money situation.

The sad truth to personal finance is that we are all on our own to make decisions and plot out our paths to retirement. Yet we see now as in the case with the mortgage market implosion that when a whole group of people make poor financial decisions it can impact our financial markets and drag the economy down.

Why then do we not see more focus on this in school? Why was I never offered a class on how to plan my retirement? Why is there no resource or call to action for me to take control and understand this myself? Finance is personal, yet our decisions, collectively, can have widespread social ramifications.

It’s time to start a personal finance educational movement. And I don’t mean sharing stock tips with your neighbor over the back fence. I mean, let’s collectively share knowledge with each other about the ramifications of poor decisions, how to spot them, how to climb out of a hole if you’re in one, and how to prepare for the future no matter how much money you make now.

My question is this: How much of this inflated market was caused by real supply and demand issues and how much was built on false premises that opened the floodgates of homeownership to people whom we now know could not afford to buy (because they are foreclosing now)?

What I’m getting at is the problem now really is affordability – not a crashing market. Inventory is still moving here. Prices have come down a tad, but we’re still looking at an income vs. cost of housing ratio that is out of whack. (Here anyway – every market is in a different situation.)

With that in mind, shouldn’t our politicians be focusing on fixing the affordability problem rather than fixing the bad loans with solution plans like this one reported today by the NY Times?

Let’s take a long-term approach over the band-aid fix.

Is there a way we can learn from the mistakes of this housing disaster to keep the costs of living within reach for hard-working families who made levelheaded financial decisions? Can we figure out a way to use the shrapnel from the downturn to create real affordable housing that is not just another contained “projects” area of a city?

I realize it’s idealistic in nature, but love the discussion…

What’s fascinating is that I struggle with “the what” of my privileged western life — same questions, vastly different circumstances. I believe we all do.

But “what” has changed meaning for me since reading this book. I feel I can see it more clearly now, though I’d struggle to explain it here. The human struggle is eternal and demands respect. It’s the details that make us pay attention, pull us through a narrative that ends with the pure pleasure of drinking a glass of clean water in the company of someone we love.

If you haven’t already, read “What Is the What” and push yourself outside your comfort zone. Eggers’ artful hand at story-telling will show you the situation in a way you probably have not seen.

Further reading on the Web:

Valentino Achak Deng Foundation

Save Darfur Foundation

10 Things You Can Do For Sudan

During my trip back East a few years back, I had to travel roughly 1,000 miles altogether by car to visit various family members strewn about the state. Along the way, I passed through towns with zero public transit – where you were naught to see a person who wasn’t walking to or from his car, where the signs along the highway started at $2.57 per gallon. And now since Wal-Mart and other large retailers have gutted the downtown areas of many small towns in my native state, people are forced to drive even more to purchase essential goods like bread and milk. Always. They have to drive cars everywhere.

The manicured retail plaza has ripped sprawl into the landscape of these small towns, driving out the downtown merchants who couldn’t compete. So what happens when there’s no oil left? How do these towns survive? Will we start to see Wal-Mart shuttle service being offered? I don’t claim to be the idealist who doesn’t drive to work in a car everyday, but at least I have the option to take the subway or bus. What happens to the people who don’t? Or more importantly, what happens to the local economies that can’t support a non-car society?

I’m not a Wal-Mart hater – really, I’m not. I watched the episode of Penn & Teller where they did a story on whether Wal-Mart was really evil and I came away seeing the company in a new light. But these big retail chains do perpetuate a lot of sprawl in the towns near where I grew up. I wonder if they will play a part in more car alternatives like light rail train service to and from the big centers.